The Story Always Comes Back To Sandeman
by theTVgirl252
Summary: Previously called ‘Peacemaking with the past’. XX-5/656-599 was fine with being a soldier until the mission. Now, he's haunted by guilt and hallucinating about someone whose designation is just as interesting as his.
1. The Eyes

Title: The Story Always Comes Back To Sandeman  
  
Note: I need a Beta, so if anyonyone's interested e-mail me or something (email-   
theTVgirl252@hotmail.com). I've reposted this, cause I didn't like the one   
before. It still has the same basic idea as the original chapter 1 though. This   
story was originally called 'Peacemaking With The Past', but I changed it too.  
  
  
*******  
  
  
Episode 1: Story Of The XX5  
Chapter 1: The Eyes  
  
  
  
July 25, 2021  
Sarren Island, Alaska  
Supply Room  
  
  
  
The boy couldn't sleep. Every time his eyes would close, there was a new set of   
eyes in front of him. Like his nose and forehead were pressed against someone   
else's, and the only thing he saw were the person's eyes.   
  
He shook his head to keep the image away.  
  
He knew those eyes. They had stared at him before, a few weeks ago. Before the   
person they belonged to died. They were pretty. Brown, kinda big. But they were   
hard and sad. That was one thing everyone at Manticore had in common. No matter   
how old you were, your eyes always had this hard and sad look in them. It meant   
the place had gotten to you.  
  
Those eyes followed him everywhere. Usually, when it was daytime, and there were   
other people around, he wasn't too bothered by them. They were just like a song   
stuck in your head. Made you a little annoyed, but you could still function   
normally. But at night, when there was nothing to keep them away, it was like   
being stuck in a dream. Or a nightmare. Filled with images of children who   
weren't around anymore.  
  
The boy crawled to a corner, scrunched himself into a ball, and rocked back and   
forth. After staying like that for a bit, he grabbed nearby boxes and put them   
around him, as if he was making a wall to separate himself from something. He   
resumed his previous rocking position. There were many boxes he could use for   
his 'wall'. The room he was in had boxes of textbooks on one side, and office   
supplies on the other. No one had put a security camera there. He had guessed   
that Manticore was not worried about someone taking their office supplies. The   
only light in the room came from the guard towers outside on the fence and the   
moon. The lights were faint, so it put the room in an eerie bluish half-light.   
  
A soft knocking sound came from the vent in the ceiling. The boy didn't even try   
to see who it was. Only one other person came up there during the night.  
  
The vent opened slowly and silently. Half a second later, someone dropped from   
the ceiling. It was a little girl, about five years old. For some reason, he   
couldn't remember her stats. He had gotten into the habit of automatically   
remembering his soldiers' statistics, but recently, he had been blanking out on   
them.   
  
The little girl, XX-5/210-493, landed without a sound on the cement. Her   
shoulder length brown-blond hair fell over charming green eyes that sometimes   
even got the Colonel to give in. In the half-light her pale skin seemed to glow,   
so the dark blue Manticore pajamas she wore stood out. It was clear that she   
would grow up to be a very attractive woman.  
  
"Hello Commander. I knew you would be here. Would you like some company?" she   
asked out to the room. She had picked out his scent. He couldn't see her, but he   
heard her feet come towards his 'wall'. He stopped rocking and sat up while she   
moved boxes to get to him. The boxes were almost immediately cleared. She   
saluted him then sat down on the floor next to him, not really giving him a   
chance to answer her previous question. "What are you doing here? Your DNA   
allows you to sleep normally," she whispered. She ignored the 'wall' she'd had   
to put down in order to get to him.   
  
"I was not doing anything. I am not sleepy," the boy, XX-5/656-599 whispered   
back. The conversations they had in this room were always spoken in low voices,   
even though no one else but XX5s came around.  
  
"You should take advantage of your need for sleep, Commander. I would like to   
sleep as much as you can. It is very tiresome to keep myself occupied when there   
is nothing to do or anyone to discuss things with."  
  
"I can not sleep either. The doctors say I have insomnia. They said I should   
relax and not stress over things."  
  
"Commander, your stress is from you not wanting to relax."  
  
"I do not believe that 210-493."  
  
She sighed. 656-599 was too stubborn and too sure that he was right all the   
time. "You should let yourself rest for training tomorrow. The physical trainers   
are making us do harder exercises now."   
  
"It will be okay. Tomorrow the physical trainers have a 'dayoff'. Colonel   
Travers told me. We will be doing a computer class instead."  
  
"Computers are good. Some XX5s in our unit need to improve their computer   
skills," 210-493 stated thoughtfully.  
  
"The XX5s in our unit are not computer specialists like you are, 210-493. Their   
computer skills are adequate to the Colonel."  
  
"The Colonel always thinks we are good enough. He has too much faith in us. That   
is why he sent us on the mission. But we-"  
  
"We were not good enough," he finished. He knew where this was going already.   
Everything always came back to the mission. "Talk about something else 210-493,"   
he warned.  
  
"Why? No one here talks about what happened, like no one remembers. I remember.   
I remember seeing the XX5 you partnered me with get two FN P-90 bullets in his   
head. Can you see it too? Imagine. His brains were-" she kept talking angrily,   
but 656-599 didn't want to listen to her anymore.   
  
If this had been a different soldier talking to him like this, he would have   
shut them up a long time before. But this was his trusty 2nd in command, the one   
person he could trust in this hell. He let her talk.   
  
She talked for a few more minutes. He didn't interrupt her; it seemed like a   
good idea to let her drive out all of the bad feelings she had kept inside for a   
few months. To him, it seemed like she was getting calmer and calmer with each   
thing she said out loud. But after a few more minutes, she stopped. Really   
stopped. She didn't talk anymore, and she didn't move either. She stayed frozen   
in her place like one of the transgenics locked up because of mental problems.   
656-599 stared at her for a long time. He wondered what she was thinking about.  
  
When it was only two hours until the XX5s would have to get up and start the   
day, he left. She still hadn't moved or talked. He contemplated waking her up   
from her catatonic state, but decided against it. She could sometimes react   
violently if someone woke her up.  
  
***  
  
656-599 crawled quietly through the vent. He used a different route than before,   
because someone had turned on the heat in the other vent.   
  
He heard a sound below him and froze. He could not be discovered; the   
consequences could be painful or deadly. He listened intently to the room below   
him. It was quiet again. He peered through the slits of the vent to see what it   
was.  
  
It was a baby.  
  
It couldn't have been more than a day old. It fascinated him, because he had   
never seen a real baby before. He studied it. Its skin color was right in the   
middle of white and light brown. There was hardly any hair on its head, but the   
hair it did have was a beautiful golden brown. He couldn't see what color its   
eyes were because it was asleep.  
  
After he stared at it for a while, 656-599 looked around the room to see if   
there was any information on it. He saw its stat card on a table nearby. He used   
his binocular vision to read the tiny print from the vent. It read:  
  
  
  
Designation: UX-5/452  
Sex: Female  
DOB: 7-24-21  
Weight: 7.5 lb  
DNA History: DNA from X5-452 and unaltered human DNA  
  
  
  
Unaltered DNA? 656-599 reread it to make sure. But he was right the first time.   
Manticore was doing experiments with regular human DNA. The effects of   
transgenic DNA mixing with regular human DNA was unknown, to him anyway.   
Something in the paper was making him uneasy, but he couldn't remember what. He   
shook his head and dismissed it. He had been forgetting a lot of things lately,   
so it was nothing to worry about. He would probably remember later. He read the   
rest of the papers on the table. There was an experiment report by the scientist   
in charge of making UX-5/452:  
  
  
  
Experiment #2234  
  
Experiment successful so far. DNA tests show that subject has retained all 452's   
traits, including the fact that 452 has no junk DNA. Subject's serotonin levels   
are normal, indicating that subject will have little or none of the seizures the   
X series suffer with. The unaltered human DNA was...  
  
  
  
The report went on to talk about the DNA of 452 and the ordinary. This report   
had such interesting information, it made his head hurt. How could someone not   
have any junk DNA? That was impossible, wasn't it?   
  
He looked at the baby again. UX-5/452. She didn't deserve to grow up in this   
crazy place. Suddenly, she woke up. Her face scrunched up and she started to   
cry. Her eyes looked eerily familiar. He started to get the feeling that he was   
forgetting something again. 656-599 decided he should leave before people got   
there. "Bye UX-5/452," he whispered, and he started to crawl back to the   
barracks.  
  
But before he could leave, he remembered the thing that was bugging him. He   
remembered where he had seen those eyes before and what was weird about her   
designation. 452-599 had died on their last mission. The eyes and designation   
that haunted him belonged to her. They also belonged to the baby in the room   
below him. 


	2. Reliving

Note: Special thanks to my beta, Sea Siren!!!! You are awesome. Well, this is chapter 2. Hope you like it. These - /// - mean that it's a flashback.  
  
Episode 1: Story Of The XX5  
Chapter 2: Reliving  
  
*****  
  
July 25, 2021  
Sarren Island, Alaska  
Hallway in front of UX-5/452's room  
  
The sounds of UX-5/452's crying barely traveled through the soundproof door. Only a trained X5 guard, like the one posted outside her door, would be able to hear it. Soundproof doors were part of the over-the-top security that Manticore had provided for the little UX-5. Other parts of her extreme protection program were: electronic locks that need eye, fingerprint, and voice identification, 5mm wide and tall security cameras hidden in the lights down the hallway, in her room, and outside her window, a scanner in the doorway to find any weapons, and laser grids on the floor and walls which sound alarms if someone crossed them. And of course, her own bodyguard/caretaker posted outside her door.  
  
The guard, X5-454, didn't mind standing there the whole night, but she didn't understand why she couldn't just sit in 452's room and watch her there. X5-454 and her unit were cloned from the original X5 series. The X5 she was cloned from was X5-452, so UX-5/452 would technically be 454's niece. DNA histories were very confusing. Maybe Manticore reused DNA just to make everything sound complicated, X5-454 mused.  
  
As soon as she heard her crying, 454 turned to 452's room.   
  
  
***  
656-599 was in shock. Things whirled through his head: thoughts, words, memories, and phrases that he recalled… all in a meaningless jumble. His advanced mental capabilities did nothing to help him regroup.  
  
Finally a comprehendible memory appeared in the mess, and he was forced to remember it.  
  
///It was their first mission. XX-5s had to be sent because there was a shortage of available soldiers. One of the Manticore facilities had been shut down because all the transgenics escaped. But 656-599 thought there was something else that he wasn't told...  
  
It seemed like such a simple job. Sabotage. Colonel Travers told them that they would be going to the University of Genetics in London. The University was on the brink of learning how to control genetics, which meant that they could start making genetically enhanced beings very soon. Manticore, of course, could not let that happen. The whole unit of XX-5s went. The plan was that they would sneak into the labs the experiments were being done in, and change the information slightly enough so they would be delayed, but the errors wouldn't be noticed. Manticore would then have time to get some X5s or X6s to finish the job.   
  
They sneaked in at night, when everything was closed and people were gone. Everything was so quiet, no one's ears heard a thing. He should have known something was wrong then. Why would everyone be gone at 12:00am? Shouldn't there be at least one professor or scientist who was too absorbed in his work that they stayed longer to finish some work? There was some really big lab equipment, wouldn't they make noise? The questions he should have been asking then he asked now.  
  
656-599 paired them off into seven groups to search each of the 13 possible labs. How brainless. He didn't have to send all of them. There was no hurry. He could have kept half of them outside in case something went wrong. The only reason he sent all of them was to get it done quick so the Colonel would be happy when they came back early with the mission completed. Should have stuck to the more cautious plan.///  
  
***  
  
454 put her hand on the pad by the door. The pad beeped in approval. She leaned over and put her face in front of the pad. A laser beam went straight into her eye for a retinal scan. It beeped again. She stood straight up again while the door scanned her for unauthorized weapons. It beeped a third time.  
  
An electronic voice commanded, "State your designation."   
  
"X5-454"  
  
There was a slight pause as the computer examined her voice. Finally, "Access Granted."   
  
She entered.  
  
***  
  
///452-599 partnered up with him. 656-599 was more protective of her than anyone else, because she was the youngest, and because they both had DNA from the original X5 commander. She was one of the best and sometimes beat 656-599 and 210-493 in training exercises.  
  
Both of them were about to open the steel lab door to LAB #8 when they heard gunfire in another hallway. 656-599 sent 452-599 to investigate. She left, but came back seconds later clearly distraught.   
  
"There are unidentified hostiles in the building! Heavily armed," she said frantically. "798-673 and 429-735 are down. Shot by hostiles in Lab #4."  
  
656-599 grabbed his comm. "All units! Assemble in designated emergency area within 15 minutes. Those who are not present will be left behind. Go." He tightened his grip on his gun and ran to find the exit with 452-599.///   
  
***  
  
As soon as X5-454 entered she sensed something different. She concentrated on all the smells and sounds in the room, seeking the thing that hadn't been there before.   
  
***  
  
///On the map of the lab building that they studied, there were ten exits that the Colonel said they could use. In the actual lab building, they were nonexistent. The doors and windows that were approved by Manticore as emergency routes were actually just walls. One was covered by hefty lab equipment. There was no time to move the stuff out of the way. Guards were close. There were at least 10. 656-599 and 452-599 did not want to fight them.  
  
They reached the end of the hallway. There were two doors. They each tried to open them, but they were locked. The guards were close. When they got to them, the XX-5s would have to fight.///  
  
***  
  
There! X5-454 found a new sound and smell in the room. It was coming from over her head, the air vent. She pulled her taser out. She didn't want to use guns around the baby. Besides, guns were loud. Why should she make a scene about something that could turn out to be as harmless as the guy who cleans the vent?  
  
She silently crept to the part of the vent that allowed maintenance workers to enter. The thing seemed to be right on it. How convenient, she thought. When she opened it, whatever it was would fall right out.  
  
She pulled the entryway open. 


End file.
